3,269 research outputs found
Thixotropic behavior of metal-containing coordination polymers: Melt viscosity of neutral aliphatic polyesters with Zn carboxylates
The viscosity behavior of polymer melts containing complexes formed between the neutralized polyester poly(diethylene glycol-co-succinic acid) and Zn acetates is discussed. The melt viscosity of these materials increases with the concentration of metal ions, and shows strong thixotropy and shear thinning. This behavior is attributed to the formation of coordination bonds between the electron donor groups within the polyester chain, and empty coordination sites of the various Zn acetate salts. The coordination complexes were obtained in situ in the polymer melt, which contains well-dispersed ZnO, by adding an equimolar amount of CH3COOH. It is proposed that the shear applied to the polymer melt destroys the polar network of the coordination polymer at a rate that is greater than the rate of reformation of the coordination bonds for the sample returning back to equilibrium, following a shear deformation
Metastable behavior of vortex matter in the electronic transport processes of homogenous superconductors
We study numerically the effect of vortex pinning on the hysteresis voltage-temperature (V-T) loop of vortex matter. It is found that different types of the V-T loops result from different densities of vortex pinning center. An anticlockwise V-T loop is observed for the vortex system with dense pinning centers, whereas a clockwise V-T loop is brought about for vortices with dilute pinning centers. It is shown that the size of the V-T loop becomes smaller for lower experimental speed, higher magnetic field, or weak pinning strength. Our numerical observation is in good agreement with experiments
Occurrence and risk assessment of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in soil from the Tiefa coal mine district, Liaoning, China.
In order to evaluate soil-associated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) pollution from coal mine activities in Tiefa coal mine, Northeast China, 16 PAHs identified as priority pollutants by US Environmental Pollution Agency were determined in mining zone soil (MZS), agricultural soil (AS), local lake bank soil (LBS), a vertical soil profile and three coal gangue samples. The total concentration of 16 PAHs (defined as Σ(16)PAH, dry weight) in surface soil ranged from 5.1 to 5642.3 ng g(-1), with an arithmetic mean of 1118.3 ng g(-1). Σ(16)PAH values at the sites from MZS are significantly higher than those found in AS and LBS. The vertical distribution of PAHs indicated that these compounds can penetrate the deeper layers of the soil, especially the low-rings compounds. A complex of petrogenic origin and pyrolytic sources was found within the study area, as suggested by the isomeric ratios of PAHs. According to principal component analysis (PCA), four factors were identified in the source contribution, including coal combustion, unburned coal particulates, coal gangue and vehicular emissions. The degree of contamination and the PAH toxicity assessment suggested that the soils of the study area have been seriously polluted and pose a high potential health risk.</span
Possible Molecular States of System and Y(4140)
The interpretation of Y(4140) as a molecule is studied
dynamically in the one boson exchange approach, where , and
exchange are included. Ten allowed states with
low spin parity are considered, we find that the , ,
, and configurations are most
tightly bound. We suggest the most favorable quantum numbers are
for Y(4140) as a molecule, however,
and can not be excluded. We propose to search for the
and partners in the and final
states, which is an important test of the molecular hypothesis of Y(4140) and
the reasonability of our model. The molecule is
deeply bound, experimental search in the channel at Tevatron
and LHC is suggested.Comment: 13 pages,2 figure
The open-charm radiative and pionic decays of molecular charmonium Y(4274)
In this work, we investigate the decay widths and the line shapes of the
open-charm radiative and pionic decays of Y(4274) with the
molecular charmonium assignment. Our calculation
indicates that the decay widths of and
can reach up to 0.05 keV and 0.75 keV,
respectively. In addition, the result of the line shape of the photon spectrum
of shows that there exists a very sharp
peak near the large end point of photon energy. The line shape of the pion
spectrum of is similar to that of the pion
spectrum of , where we also find a very
sharp peak near the large end point of pion energy. According to our
calculation, we suggest further experiments to carry out the search for the
open-charm radiative and pionic decays of Y(4274).Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, 1 table. Published versio
A Glimpse Far into the Future: Understanding Long-term Crowd Worker Quality
Microtask crowdsourcing is increasingly critical to the creation of extremely
large datasets. As a result, crowd workers spend weeks or months repeating the
exact same tasks, making it necessary to understand their behavior over these
long periods of time. We utilize three large, longitudinal datasets of nine
million annotations collected from Amazon Mechanical Turk to examine claims
that workers fatigue or satisfice over these long periods, producing lower
quality work. We find that, contrary to these claims, workers are extremely
stable in their quality over the entire period. To understand whether workers
set their quality based on the task's requirements for acceptance, we then
perform an experiment where we vary the required quality for a large
crowdsourcing task. Workers did not adjust their quality based on the
acceptance threshold: workers who were above the threshold continued working at
their usual quality level, and workers below the threshold self-selected
themselves out of the task. Capitalizing on this consistency, we demonstrate
that it is possible to predict workers' long-term quality using just a glimpse
of their quality on the first five tasks.Comment: 10 pages, 11 figures, accepted CSCW 201
A systematic review of infectious illness presenteeism : prevalence, reasons and risk factors
Background
Workplace presenteeism is common and leads to the spread of infectious diseases. Previous reviews have focused on presenteeism in relation to general physical or mental ill health. In this systematic review we identified the prevalence of, and reasons and risk factors for, presenteeism in relation to an infectious illness.
Method
We searched Medline, Scopus, Web of Science, PsycINFO and PsycARTICLES with terms relating to infectious illnesses and presenteeism at the work place or school; reference lists of relevant articles were also hand-searched.
Result
Our search yielded 3580 papers after deduplication. After title, abstract and full text screening, 23 papers reporting on 24 studies were included. Twenty-three studies were cross-sectional studies and one was prospective. The quality of included studies was relatively poor due to problems such as sampling and non-response bias. Presenteeism prevalence ranged from 35 to 97%. Self-reported reasons for presenteeism fell into three main themes: 1. Organisational factors (organisational policy, presenteeism culture, disciplinary action), 2. Job characteristics (lack of cover, professionalism, job demand), and 3. Personal reasons (burden on colleagues, colleague perceptions, threshold of sickness absence and financial concerns). Statistical risk factors fell into four themes: 1. Sociodemographic, 2. Health, 3. Influenza-related behaviour, and 4. Employment characteristics. Most of the risk factors had insufficient evidence to allow us to draw any firm conclusions, and evidence regarding gender and age was inconsistent. The risk factor with the most consistent findings concerned occupation type, suggesting that those who worked in the healthcare sector, and specifically physicians, were at a higher risk of infectious illness presenteeism.
Conclusion
Infectious illness presenteeism is common. To address the public health consequences, organisations should focus on promoting a positive working culture and developing sickness absence policies that reduce presenteeism. Further research is needed in non-health sector organisations and schools to identify risk factors related to different organisations, which can then be used to tailor interventions at the organisational and individual level
Two charged strangeonium-like structures observable in the process
Via the Initial Single Pion Emission (ISPE) mechanism, we study the
invariant mass spectrum distribution of . Our calculation indicates there exist a sharp peak
structure () close to the threshold and a broad
structure () near the threshold. In addition, we
also investigate the process due to
the ISPE mechanism, where a sharp peak around the threshold
appears in the invariant mass spectrum distribution. We
suggest to carry out the search for these charged strangeonium-like structures
in future experiment, especially Belle II, Super-B and BESIII.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures. Accepted by Eur. Phys. J.
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